Stephen Colbert’s most-watched recent interview on YouTube isn’t his sit-down with Taylor Swift, or his pre- and post-election conversations with Kamala Harris. Nor is it his interview with Jimmy Kimmel shortly after the latter’s suspension last fall.
It’s his conversation with previously little-known Texas state representative James Talarico.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the YouTube-exclusive clip had surpassed six million views, making it The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s most-viewed interview on the platform in more than three years.
It is also now the show’s fourth most-watched clip on YouTube over the past 12 months. Only three videos have drawn larger audiences in that span: two monologues following Colbert’s cancellation in July 2025, and a third following Kimmel’s suspension in September.
The clip’s viral performance comes amid Colbert’s ongoing dispute with CBS over the interview. After CBS denied that network lawyers had blocked the segment over Equal Time concerns, Colbert forcefully pushed back Tuesday night, criticizing the network for issuing its statement and declaring he didn’t “even know what to do with this crap” before theatrically placing it in a dog poop bag.
Earlier in Tuesday night’s broadcast, Colbert marveled at the Talarico interview’s YouTube success, noting that it had already passed three million views, sardonically adding, “I wish we should have put it on the show where no one would’ve watched it.”
With early voting now underway in the race for the Democratic nomination to challenge John Cornyn for U.S. Senate, James Talarico appears to be the biggest beneficiary of Colbert’s dust-up with CBS. His campaign says it raised $2.5 million in the 24 hours following the interview’s release on YouTube—its best fundraising day yet.
The last interview on Colbert’s channel to draw a larger audience came in January 2023, when Prince Harry sat down with the host in a clip that has since amassed more than 7.7 million views.
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Its views have surpassed those of the Prince Harry interview now.